That's why Bo Peabody, co-founder and general partner of Village Ventures based in Williamstown, Mass., and author of "Lucky or Smart?" was invited to speak May 24 to Union College students studying entrepreneurship and using his book as one of their texts.

Village Ventures is a network of more than a dozen regionally focused venture funds valued at more than $250 million combined. One of them is High Peaks Venture Partners in Troy.

"He plays a huge role in venture funding," said Bela Musits, managing director of High Peaks.

Peabody made a name for himself in 1992 when he founded Tripod Inc., one of the early Web-based businesses. He made headlines when he sold Tripod to Lycos in 1997 for $58 million in stock. Two years later, his stock was worth 10 times that.

Startups back in vogue

Peabody knows about timing and said it's a good time for starting a venture-backed company.

"Startups are very much back in vogue now," he said.

And venture capital seems to be stronger following the fallout from the dot-com bust when venture funds were backing ideas scrawled on napkins.

Locally, there's evidence of the payoffs venture funds are seeing. FA Technology Ventures, the region's largest venture fund with $100 million under management, said this week that one of its portfolio companies, Softricity Inc., a software company in Boston, has been acquired by Microsoft.

It is the second big "liquidity event" First Albany, FA Tech's parent, has had in the past 12 months. In late 2005, iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) of Massachusetts, another company First Albany invested in, made $31 million when iRobot went public.

Alan Goldberg, First Albany Cos. Inc.'s CEO, told shareholders earlier this month that many of the first companies that First Albany has invested in are coming to maturity and he expects more liquidity events such as acquisitions or initial public offerings will be happening this year.

Village Ventures is in the midst of closing its second fund at more than $125 million.

Peabody positive on upstate New York

"For a while, venture funding had dried up after the crash of the late '90s. But when Google went public, people realized that the venture business is not correlated to the public markets," Peabody said. "In fact, it is inversely correlated. When the public markets are doing poorly, there are still entrepreneurs out there building great businesses. In some ways, it is easier to build a business when the public market is down than when it is red hot."

Peabody is pleased with High Peaks' performance, calling it one of the top funds in the Village Ventures network.

Peabody also is positive about upstate New York's venture prospects.

"Upstate New York is very exciting," he said. "That said, it will take longer than anyone wants it to. But that is [one of] the reasons upstate New York will do well. The local businesspeople and politicians have a reasonable view of how long it takes to build a real sustainable venture community. The worst thing for a business community is unrealistic expectations."